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Contractual Arrangements

By Lisa Belkin June 17, 2008 12:14 pmJune 17, 2008 12:14 pm

An e-mail message from Beth Burkstrand-Reid, who teaches family law and sex-based discrimination at the American University Washington College of Law, reminded me of an article I read long ago by Alix Kates Schulman. In 1969 Schulman created an elaborate agreement that divided household labor, itemizing who did such tasks as “getting children to and from lessons, doctors, dentists, friends’ houses, park, parties, movies, library, etc.” or “calling doctors, checking out symptoms, getting prescriptions filled, remembering to give medicine, taking days off to stay home with sick child” or “helping with homework, personal problems, projects like cooking, making gifts, experiments, planting, etc., answering questions, explaining things.”

The document never took off, but Burkstand-Reid has her students negotiate such contracts to fit their own lives each year “as a way of helping them identify bias in their own lives,” she wrote in her note to me. “The results are always fascinating. In general, I think young feminists reject formal equality to a degree that is quite unsettling for older feminists. There really is a divide. Young women are much more comfortable with the ‘we’ll work it out’ type of relationship to equity, while 30s and above are much more likely to spell it out in detail.”

True, but I would also add that younger couples seem to come to relationships with an assumption of equity that older generations dont have. It will be interesting to see what happens to that assumption as their lives unfurl.

As an “older feminist” I lived through and benefited from (both in career and home life) the women’s movement of the 70’s. I “knew” I had to function like a man in the public arena of work in order to succeed. I remember vividly an interview I had with a professor at a university when I was applying for entry into the graduate program in Psychology. This professor (who later became my mentor) commented on how difficult it was for me to be “captive to the area” when trying to get accepted into a graduate program. It was assumed that I would apply only to graduate schools in the area where I lived bbecause my husband had just taken his first position after graduate school at a nearby university. (I was not allowed to apply to the graduate school program at this university because of his professorship their) I indignantly commented that I was no such “captive” because my husband was willing to seek a position at the program to which I was accepted. This required much soul searching on his part. All through our careers, my husband and I have been willing to NEGOTIATE with and support each other in the choices we have needed to make. We are now celebrating 48 years of marriage.

One just didn’t do graduate school on a part-time basis at that time, and neither of us thought about my husband working part-time at this first position out of graduate school. So we did what most others in our sitution did, we put our three children into the hands of other to care for them. And, childcare was not prevalent at that time and most of it was inadequate or too expensive.

I think that increasingly many women (and men) want an opportunity to be productive in the public arena of work and be caring of their children in the private arena of family. Many do not want to have their children entirely cared for by others. And many who cannot arrnge their private lives to provide the personal care for their children will “opt out.” Some women push for change in their private lives. And, it doesn’t always turn out well.

Marital researchers have found that there is a very destructive pattern of interaction between couples that is quite prevalent. This is the so-called “demand-withdraw pattern” of marital communication. Numberous studies have demonstrated that there is a typical gender effect in communication between husbands and wives in which, if the wife seeks change in the marriage that SHE DESIRES, the husband will retreat or withdraw of just not respond. If when wives seek change, their husband become disengaged or,in John Gottman’s terms, resist influence by their wives, one way to get change or to try to inluence one’s husband is to cast the request or demand in terms of the “fairness” dimension of the situation, doing 50/50. I think that people react to “fairness” and “equality” applied at home because these qualities of justice are more characteristic of the marketplace while the qualities of love, altruism, self-denial, and generosity are the basis for justice in the family. Susan Moller Okin wrote about this befurcation in theories of justice in “Justice, Gender, and the Family.” Grace Clement does a brilliant analysis of the justice of care (private arena justice) and the justice of autonomy (public arena justice.

A note about the ThirdPath Institute with which I have been associated for about two years. The ThirdPath Institute (www.thirdpath.org) is committed to helping people become more INTENTIONAL about leading meaningful lives by redesigning work and redesigning family caare.

ThirdPath works with couples, and has been training others like me to give couples a helping hand to move past the “demand and withdraw” pattern, and instead, find the unique solution that works best for their family. What I’ve also seen in this work is that it encourages both men and women to find time for meaningful relationships with each other and with their children. This can only be good for all of us.

One final note. Anthropologist Peggy Sanday found in a study of 186 hunter-gatherer cultures that when men are involved in the care of their infants, the cultures do not make war.

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We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more